


You (Two) Give Me This Feeling

by RetroactiveCon



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Autistic Cisco Ramon, Dancing, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Trans Cisco Ramon, Vibe Powers (The Flash TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24929692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RetroactiveCon/pseuds/RetroactiveCon
Summary: “Reporting for squishing duty!” Barry runs back into the room, settles on Cisco’s other side, and gives a little delighted purr. Moments later, his fingers join Cisco’s in Hartley’s hair. “There’s no better way to spend a morning than with my guys.”
Relationships: Barry Allen/Cisco Ramon/Hartley Rathaway
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	You (Two) Give Me This Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonlightcanary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlightcanary/gifts).



> So this fic happened because moonlightcanary kept reading Barry/Cisco/Hartley into the Praying That It'll Be You 'verse. A huge thank you to SophiaCatherine for listening to me complain about this fic and suggesting the singing and dancing scene, which was a disaster to choreograph but a lot of fun to write. This is my second attempt at this fic and I'm still not thrilled with it, but moonlightcanary, I hope it's the right kind of polyamorous fluff!

Hartley wakes to the unpleasantly hard feeling of knuckles against his scalp. He shifts away from the insistent jabbing and mumbles, “You’re on my pillow. Move.”

Cisco’s voice is sleepy-slow and slurred, as though he’s barely awake. “Dude, your head is on my squishy stim. _You_ move.” 

“In fairness.” Barry sounds like he’s been awake for a few minutes, but if Hartley knows him, he’s been enjoying the cuddle time. He reaches out without opening his eyes, finds Barry’s belly by touch, and pets him absently. “You’re kind of on top of him, Hartley. I think you have to move.” 

Hartley makes an unhappy noise, opens his eyes, and sits up. As soon as he moves, Cisco whines and makes grabby hands. 

“I didn’t mean it. Come back, I like it when you use me as a pillow.” 

Hartley smirks. Cisco has one hand up his own nightshirt (an absurd, worn-soft graphic tee that says “Never trust an atom, they make up everything) so that he can squish his breast. Always the left one, Hartley recalls; he's explained that it “feels more natural” to reach across his body, and given that he’s right-handed, this means he favors the left side. Which is, unfortunately, Hartley’s side of the bed. “You can have squish stim or pressure stim. Apparently you can’t have both.” 

Cisco pouts. “I don’t even _like_ my chest,” he complains. “It’s just good for squish stim and having you use it as a pillow.”

“Well, I’m glad we can give you a reason to value it until you find time for top,” Barry chips in. He leans in to nuzzle Cisco’s nose, then across to brush his lips over Hartley’s cheek. (They don’t do morning kisses before brushing their teeth—none of them can stand morning breath.) 

“Mhmm. If you love me you’ll squish me,” Cisco pouts. 

Barry rocks side to side. “I wanna squish you,” he murmurs, “but I gotta…I’ll just be a second.” He bolts to his feet and runs out of the room. 

In his absence, Hartley lays back down. Rather than pillow his head on Cisco’s breast, which is still being used for squish stim, he settles on his stomach and listens to the peculiar burbling sounds it makes. 

“You got all stiff and shaky while you slept,” Cisco ventures. His free hand tangles in Hartley’s hair and pulls. Hartley’s eyes flutter closed. He used to hate how tactile Cisco is, but letting him pet his hair is nice. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“…Yes.” In theory, Hartley had expected it to be easier to keep secrets with two partners—all he had to do was gently redirect them to focus on each other until they forgot what they were asking him. There was no need to burden them when they could be happily chatting with each other. In practice, having two partners means twice the amount of concern when he tries to redirect them, so he’s stopped trying. “I only remember bits and pieces.”

“I guess that’s good.” Cisco keeps petting him. “I’m pretty sure I dreamt of flying. That’d be a cool power to have. Or maybe I was flying with someone?” He sounds genuinely confused. That doesn’t make Hartley any less sure there’s a punchline somewhere. “I mean, heck, if Hawkgirl scooped me up I wouldn’t say no to that…”

Hartley can’t help feeling acutely guilty. He’s the only one of the three of them who isn’t attracted to multiple genders, and while he’d never guilt Barry or Cisco for noticing other attractive people, he’s set limits on who he’d be willing to allow into their relationship. (Ideally, he’d like to keep it as just the three of them, but setting such a limit feels selfish. It would force them to pretend he's enough to keep them happy, and he knows better than that.) 

“Reporting for squishing duty!” Barry runs back into the room, settles on Cisco’s other side, and gives a little delighted purr. Moments later, his fingers join Cisco’s in Hartley’s hair. Hartley purrs and lets his worrisome thoughts melt away. “There’s no better way to spend a morning than with my guys.” 

“What about a morning with us and pancakes?” Cisco ventures. 

Hartley arches an eyebrow. “What happened to ‘if you love me you’ll squish me’?” 

“Changed my mind, I’m hungry.” Cisco attempts to struggle free from under their combined weight. He doesn’t get very far. “Let me up, you absolute cuddle fiends!” 

“You’re absurd.” Hartley sits up and crawls to the edge of the bed. Behind him, there's so much rustling of sheets that he assumes they're having a hard time disentangling themselves. “Also, having seen what you and Barry eat in the mornings, I think the term you’re looking for now is ‘dessert.’”

“And yet, you spoil us anyway.” Cisco, now free of Barry’s cuddling, leans forward to give Hartley a quick kiss. They break apart as soon as it starts with matching expressions of disgust. Cisco sticks out his tongue. “Bleh, morning breath!” 

“A detour for mouthwash, first, I think,” Hartley decides. He leans around Cisco to pet Barry’s hair. “Can you mix up the pancake batter for us, sweet boy?” 

“Sure!” Barry runs off in a burst of lightning. The static left lingering in the air causes Cisco’s hair to fluff out like a frightened cat. Hartley doubles over in a fit of laughter, both at the shock of staticky hair and at Cisco’s unamused expression. 

“I hate you,” Cisco mutters and trudges into the bathroom. 

A few minutes later, having jostled for space at the sink and used altogether too much mouthwash, they wander into the kitchen. Barry has pancakes on the griddle and a spatula in his hand, which he’s using as a microphone for an adorable rendition of “High Hopes.” 

_“Had to have high high hopes in the kitchen_  
_That my guys would come and kiss me while I’m griddlin’_  
_Makin’ up pancakes by the dozens or the millions_  
_Had to have high high hopes!”_

“I don’t think you have the beats right,” Hartley says. "And even your metabolism wouldn't be able to handle a million pancakes, supposing we had the ingredients."

“Don’t be mean!” Cisco wanders over to pull Barry into a quick kiss. “You’re cute, your singing is cute, your vaguely heart-shaped pancakes are cute. Don’t listen to him, he’s a grumpy asshole before breakfast.” 

“You wound me.” Hartley wanders over to start the coffee. “I endeavor to be a grumpy asshole after breakfast, too.”

“And you succeed,” Cisco mumbles. He steals a pancake and finishes it in a few large bites.

Barry casts both of them a wide-eyed, pouty-mouthed look. There's a twinkle in his eyes that tells Hartley he knows how cute he is, but they're all weak for each other's puppy eyes. “Don’t fight,” he begs. “I just wanna have a nice quiet day.”

“And what exactly are you hoping to accomplish with this nice quiet day?” While the coffee brews, Hartley hurries back across the kitchen to kiss Barry. Cisco stares so piteously that Hartley has to kiss him too. “Go to the bookstore? Take you clothes-shopping?” He arches an eyebrow at Cisco’s worn graphic tee. 

“Actually—hey, I like this shirt—it feels like it’s gonna be a vibes-are-loud day, so can we stay in?” Cisco implores.

“Yeah, of course,” they say in unison. Cisco has learned a lot about living with his vibes, but for no reason they can discern, some days threaten to overwhelm him. Caitlin suspects it’s tied to days where he would be prone to sensory overload even without his vibes, but they have no way of testing that.

“Then we can cuddle some more?” Cisco goes to set the table. 

“Yeah,” Barry coos. “We promised we’d squish you.”

“Yeah.” Cisco turns around long enough to give both of them a wide grin. “You did.”

When the pancakes are done, Hartley butters his; Cisco and Barry top theirs with cream, berries, and chocolate syrup. Hartley raises an eyebrow. “What did I say? Dessert.”

“And you eat yours with _butter_ ,” Cisco says, as though it’s an unforgivable offense. Barry giggles and reaches for the juice.

“While we cuddle, we could watch something…” He lights up. “ _Singin’ In the Rain_?”

“Aww, no.” Cisco appeals, for some strange reason, to Hartley, as though the man whose gimmick is sound will save him from a musical. “That movie always makes me dancing-jealous.”

“You can’t dance?” Hartley asks in confusion. Belatedly, he reminds himself that they probably had no reason to learn. (How he wishes the same had been true for him.)

“You can?” To his surprise, both of them stare at him. He wants to know when he ever gave them the impression he couldn’t.

“Yes?” When they continue to stare, he elaborates in frustration, “I was a society boy. I’d have been even more of a disgrace to my parents if I didn’t learn how to dance.” If they ask him to dance, it will be the first time he's danced with partners of his choosing. He's not going to tell that to them; it would only make them pity him.

“You could teach us,” Barry suggests hopefully in between too-large bites of pancake. 

“Are we sure that’s a good idea for a bad vibes day?” Hartley glances at Cisco, who’s listening with his head cocked. Upon being asked a question, he sits up and nods.

“Yeah! I mean, I have no idea, I’ve never tried, but I’m willing to find out.” With a grin, he adds, “If only to watch you fail at teaching us.”

Hartley rolls his eyes and goes back to eating his pancakes. He could teach each of them separately, he muses, but neither one of them is patient. With a little modification, he might be able to teach them a three-person waltz.

Later, having finished their breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and cleared a space in the living room, Hartley discovers that teaching both of them to dance at one time is more complicated than he thought. “Okay.” He takes a position with his back to the television—of the three of them, he’s the least likely to take a too-large step back and jostle it. “Both of you, come here.”

Barry’s eyes widen. Cisco pauses in the middle of putting his hair up to stare at the open space in shock. “What? I thought dancing was two-by-two. You know, not suitable for the whole polycule.”

“We’ll never know unless we try!” Barry bounds over and pulls Cisco along. “Come on. At the very least we’ll get to laugh at ourselves.”

Hartley pulls both of them close. He puts his left hand on Cisco’s shoulder and his right on Barry’s waist. “Cisco, put your hand on my waist and your other hand on Barry’s shoulder. Barry…ahead of me, as usual.” Barry's hands are already on Hartley's shoulder and Cisco's waist. Hartley turns his head to nuzzle his cheek against Barry’s hand. “Okay. The basic movement for the waltz, which is the most useful dance at most social events, is the box step. Obviously, with three of us, we’re going to have to modify it.”

“You don’t say.” Cisco arches an eyebrow. Hartley dutifully pretends not to have heard.

“All of us are going to step with the left foot—forward and to the side, like so.” Hartley demonstrates. This brings him firmly against Cisco’s side. “And ideally, we’ll end up turning and moving that way…sort of. In a two-person waltz, there’s a little more freedom to decide between a step and a turn, but I don’t think we have that luxury.”

All three of them try one step, then another, and simultaneously decide, “This is ridiculous.”

“But fun!” Barry adds. He casts Hartley a wide-eyed look. Sweet boy, does he think Hartley will be offended for their decision that this was an absurd endeavor? It's possibly the worst dance he's ever led; that doesn't make it any less fun.

“Might be more fun with music," Cisco muses. Of course he would be the one to suggest a song; music is Hartley's gimmick, but it speaks to Cisco on a level neither of the others understand. “We’re waltzing. Let’s, you know, make it feel like we really are.”

“You want to put on some music?” Hartley coaxes them through another step. “Or are you asking me to sing?”

Cisco widens his eyes to ridiculous, puppy-like pleading. _Damn_ their collective weakness for puppy eyes. “You never sing for us.”

Hartley considers what song he could sing that seems suitable for a three-person waltz. When the answer occurs to him, he wonders how he could ever have considered any other song. “Ten minutes ago I saw you, I looked up when you came through the door…”

Cisco’s brow furrows. “I don’t know this song,” he admits, “but it sounds like fun.”

In shock at the notion of Cisco’s unfamiliarity with it, Hartley sings louder. To his delight, Barry joins in. 

_“I wanted to ring out the bells_  
_And fling out my arms and to sing out the news:_  
_I have found them, they are angels_  
_With the dust of the stars in their eyes…”_

Cisco’s mouth drops open in awed delight. “Wait, wait, this is an _actual polyamory song_? For a polyamorous waltz?”

Hartley shakes his head and leans over to kiss his cheek. “No, but it isn’t so hard to change the words for my sweet guys.” He pulls them into a melodramatic spin that threatens to crash Barry into the coffee table. They circle away to a more open section of the floor, laughing.

The first sign of trouble comes when Cisco stumbles over a step. “Y-you first heard that song with Jerrie,” he murmurs. “She’s thinking of it too. She’s holding your picture, missing you, I can see it.”

Barry stops instantly and pulls Cisco into his arms. “Okay,” he soothes. “Okay, vibes are loud. Let’s go sit down and cuddle. Remember we said we’d do that?”

“You used to dance with your mother.” Cisco presses his hands to his head and scrunches his eyes as tightly closed as possible. “There are worlds where you still can and I…I want this to stop, it’s like a video montage from hell…”

Hartley runs back to the kitchen to grab a sliver of ice. Frost taught them to use ice cubes to jolt Hartley out of bad memories, which he hates but finds effective; they tried it for Cisco once out of desperation and found it to work, more or less. When he brings the ice cube back, Cisco takes it in his mouth with an urgency he typically reserves for his chew necklace.

“Don’t talk, don’t touch me, that’ll set it off again.” He kneels on the floor and drops his head into his hands. “Just give me a minute.”

Obediently, they wait until Cisco reaches out for them. Barry brings one of Cisco’s hands to his lips; Hartley clasps the other tightly to his chest.

“Better?” he coaxes.

“Light is really bright, but I’m not vibing eight different Nora Allens and three different Rathaway families and twenty other versions of me, if that’s what you’re asking.” Cisco scoots closer to them and mumbles, “The cuddling thing you mentioned? I want that now, please.”

“Okay.” Hartley helps him to his feet. Barry leads the way, not over to the couch, but back to the bedroom. When they get there, Hartley settles at the head of the bed with his back to the headboard; Cisco spreads out on the mattress with his head in Hartley’s lap, and Barry happily lays with his head on Cisco’s belly to give him some pressure stim. Hartley brushes gentle fingers through Cisco’s hair and whispers thoughtless, automatic praise.

“I’m not good,” Cisco says. His voice quivers and, with a wet whispery sound only Hartley can hear, tears drip onto Hartley’s pants. “I ruined our dancing.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Hartley murmurs. He grazes his fingernails over Cisco's scalp, knowing how much he loves it. “You warned us you were having a loud vibes day, and when it got bad, you let us care for you. That didn’t ruin our day. It gave us an excuse to cuddle you, and since when is a day spent cuddling you a day ruined?”

Cisco sniffles. “Yeah, I guess.”

“We love cuddling you,” Barry reminds him. He glances up at Hartley with a strange, pensive look. Hartley pretends not to know what it’s about, although he can guess: he’s quick to reassure either of them that they don’t ruin anything by asking for help, but he won’t even ask unless his memories are inescapably bad. That’s not a conversation they’re going to have when Cisco needs calm. “Really, this is okay. You didn’t ruin anything.”

“We can dance again once my vibes calm down?” Cisco blinks up at Hartley with hopeful, bleary eyes.

“Yes, but maybe not that particular dance.” Hartley manages a small smile. “I don’t think there’s enough room in our living room to get creative with it.”

Cisco nods, closes his eyes again, and tangles his fingers in Barry’s hair. “Love you both,” he murmurs. “Best partners a guy could hope for.”

“We love you too.” Barry kisses Cisco’s belly and reaches up to clasp Hartley’s free hand. 

“So much,” Hartley agrees. “And this isn’t ruined. This is perfect.”

They end up napping together for a few hours before getting up again, this time with markedly fewer loud vibes. Both of them take more time to reassure Cisco that he didn’t ruin anything, and they unanimously decide not to dance again. If they end up watching _Singin’ In the Rain_ , well…this time Cisco has no objections.


End file.
